Ceri Radford is Assistant Comment Editor of the Telegraph.

The secret of happiness

There's one nugget from my pretty ephemeral summer reading that has stuck with me as we edge into Autumn.

Wolves are not conducive to contentment, apparently

A character in the excellent historical novel The Tenderness of Wolves sights civilisation after six days trekking through the frozen Canadian wilderness, prompting the comment: "Clearly the secret of happiness Â… is a variation on the general principle of banging your head against a wall, and then stopping."

I think the author, Stef Penney, makes a valid point it's funny how much your definition of happiness depends on your current circumstances, and how quickly that definition can change.

Take holidays, for example. Not that I'd compare working at the Telegraph to banging my head against a wall, far less tramping through a miserable frost-bitten hinterland with the ever-present danger of being eaten alive by wolves, but there's still a parallel in there somewhere.

Before I set off on my recent holiday, the prospect of exchanging the office/commute loop for lazing about on a sunlounger was tantamount to nirvana, a dumper-truck full of class-A drugs or 72 virgins, depending on your preferences. A few days on said sunlounger one clear, azure sky blending into another (yawn), one relaxing aperitif smudging into six and I started to get annoyingly complacent. Suddenly pleasant surroundings and the absence of work weren't enough to perk me up. The bar had been raised.

And after approximately two busy days back, it sank again. Never mind a sea view and a swimming pool, suddenly getting home from work to luke-warm chow mein and a rerun of America's Next Top Model was all I needed for bliss.